The Pittsburgh Press (September 16, 1946)
Are Reds planning to fight?
Russia lacks strength for first class war, Paris diplomats say
Belligerent blustering at peace conference covers up grave weaknesses at home
By Ludwell Denny, Scripps-Howard staff writer
At the Paris conference two questions are uppermost: Is Russia forcing a war? Is she strong enough now to fight a major war? The following dispatch is the first of a series on what these informed diplomats and their experts are saying among themselves.
PARIS – Russia’s belligerent blustering at the Paris conference and at the United Nations Security Council covers up grave weaknesses at home. She is not strong enough to fight a major offensive war successfully now or in the near future.
This is the judgment of representative American and European authorities here who have access to the best official reports on the subject.
They do not say there will be no war. They do not know. But the danger is sufficiently acute for them to investigate and evaluate Russia’s strength nest carefully. Their conclusion is that Russia is not adequately prepared to fight and know it but at the same time she continues to use provocative methods for aggressive ends which usually cause war.
Russia is in worse shape economically than is generally supposed. The devastation left to the war is still widespread, especially in White Russia and the Ukraine. Reconstruction and recovery is slow in all three basic elements for a war economy – agriculture, heavy industry and transportation.
The government promised an end to the unpopular bread rationing by July. Then the date was postponed until October. Recently Moscow announced it would be continued through next year. The failure of the Ukraine crops from drought was one cause. No government tantalizes its people with unfilled promises of lifting rationing for fun. The political consequences are too risky.
Nevertheless, the food shortage is not as extreme as some exaggerated reports have indicated. Good crops in some other regions partly have offset the western losses. So, net, the harvest is believed to be fair. But the point is that the reserves are low and the harvest is reported to be insufficient to build up the essential supplies.
War requires reserves of food
Those reserves are required by Moscow for two purposes: One is for relief next spring in the satellite countries after UNRRA withdraws food is essential as a Soviet political weapon in her sphere of influence. Second, for storage to bulk up a war reserve.
This shortage of food reserves is said to explain in part Moscow’s policy of keeping large occupation armies in other countries, where they can live off the land. More red troops are stationed in Eastern Germany and Austria than are required for immediate military purposes. Their training, reorganization and reindoctrination, so important to Moscow, could be carried out better inside Russia. Moreover, their continued presence in such excessive numbers is a political liability to the German and Austrian Communist parties which are trying to win over the natives.
But Russian home conditions being what they are, the Kremlin cannot afford to feed those Red Armies so long as they can find their own food abroad.
Slow industrial recovery is admitted officially by Moscow. Since June the Ministry for State Control has been purging many factory managers and others, charging them with inefficiency and corruption. The current five-year plan announced by Premier Josef Stalin last February to triple pre-war production has been running up against additional troubles other than national fatigue after the long, heroic effort and the shortage of industrial technicians.
The most striking evidence of this is the virtual collapse, for the time being at least, of the original Kremlin plan to rehabilitate and industrialize the country by moving German, Austrian and other conquered plants bodily to Russia. Today much of that machinery is lying scattered and rusting because of inability of the Russians to assemble and use it.
Transport weakest link in Russia
This failure, plus the time factor in the present war danger, has forced Stalin to reverse his plan. He now is leaving the factories in Germany and Austria and running them full blast with native technicians and labor to produce armaments and all type of goods for the Red Army.
The transportation situation is the worst of all. Traditionally a weak link in the Russian economy it suffered terrible war destruction. Hundreds of thousands of German prisoners still are held in Russia to repair rail lines, build bridges and highways.
Locomotives and railway equipment generally are problems. For example, on the Moscow-Leningrad main line the trip now takes from twice to three times the pre-war schedule.
It is not suggested here that these many evidences of Russia’s economic troubles will prevent her eventual recovery and growth as a leading industrial power. But for the present and near future Russia’s economic base is too narrow and too shaky, according to many international experts gathered here, to sustain the kind of war apparently threatened by the Soviet Union and its satellites.
NEXT: Political factors in the Soviet war threat